


Emergency Care

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Dean Winchester, So Probably Complete Inaccurate, Winchester Style First Aid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 06:55:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16739188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: They’re not even half way back to the Bunker when the wound caused by the lance reopens.At least this time Cas isn’t dying from it, but the wound is infected and they need to deal with it before subjecting Cas to hours of travel.But treating a hurt, feverish angel in a motel room for a wound that nearly killed him is not going to be easy.  Or pleasant.





	Emergency Care

They were all on edge. 

Dean kept glancing in the back seat every few moments, just to assure himself Cas was still there, and he was still alive, even if the angel looked like road kill.

They’d fix that, though. They’d make it back to the bunker, and they’d get Cas in a bath and Dean would run his clothes through the laundry, and then…

No, that wouldn’t work. The tear in his shirt was huge. It was beyond saving and Dean no way, no how, was going to put it in front of Cas and see if he had enough mojo to fix it up.

He’d wash everything else but that shirt was going in the trash. He had a dress shirt that would fit Cas no problem, the angel could have it.

But not for a while. Until Cas was fully over this, Dean also had a pair of old sweat pants and a hoodie he’d coax his friend into. Let Cas rest up, get himself back together.

Let them all do that.

“Dean, pull over,” Sam said, and that dragged Dean out of his plans to take care of Cas and pulled his attention once more to the back seat.

Sam was clambering over, no small feat for someone his size, and Dean felt his heart seize up, but he did as Sam said, putting on the blinker and stopping as fast as he could by the side of the road.

Mary, following in Cas’s truck, did the same and came running over to them.

Dean watched as Sam carefully pushed aside Cas’s coat, and opened up his shirt. They’d disposed of the emergency dressing Mary had used back in the barn (it had no longer been needed, and was filthy with blood and the corruption Cas had vomited up as his insides melted).

So they had a clear view of where the wound had been…

And where it was again.

“Fuck,” Dean said. He took off his coat, and quickly wriggled out of his shirt before passing it back to Sam.

“It’s not too bad,” Sam said. “Maybe moving just opened it up again.”

Mary opened the door, and leaned in. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Cas glanced at her, face tight with pain. “My wound…”

“It’s open again,” Dean said, and he couldn’t get the anger out of his voice when he looked at his mom.

Mary didn’t flinch at it, but he could see she knew what he was thinking. “Is it like before?”

Sam moved the shirt back enough to look more closely at the wound. “I don’t think so. It looks...different. Cas?”

The angel looked down, grimacing. Dean leaned in a little closer. “No. I think…. It’s infected, but not by Michael’s curse.”

It did look different, Dean saw. The edges of the wound were reddened, but there weren’t the same black threadlike veins spidering out from around it.

And Cas wasn’t puking up his own necrotic blood either.

Who knew where that piece of shit prince of hell had kept that spear when he wasn’t using it to infect angels with a sadistic toxin?

And Cas was still weak, so maybe whatever this was had just gotten a hold of him.

It wasn’t the first infected wound they’d had to deal with, and it _was_ at least something they could.

“Okay,” he said. “Sam, stay back there with him. Mom, keep following us. We’re gonna find a motel and take care of this.”

“Dean,” Cas said. “You’re all tired, we can just….”

“ _You_ ,” Dean said, “can just let us take care of you. That’s gonna get worse the longer we leave it untreated, and you are not spending eight hours in the back of this car with an open wound to your gut. Motel, then we fix that up.”

He gave the angel a look which cowed him into silence, and then his mother another which had her closing over the door and rushing back to Cas's truck.

She’d been on the verge of reaching out to touch Cas, to offer comfort. Dean had put that idea right out of her head.

She’d gotten them into this, and it looked like Cas was not out of the woods yet.

He pulled back onto the road and drove on, keeping an eye out for the nearest motel.

{}{}

They sent Mary in to book a room, and then he and Sam half dragged-half carried Cas inside.

Mary put the lights on, and Sam settled Cas on the bed.

Dean crouched down in front of him, offered the angel an apology, and carefully pushed aside his clothes.

The shirt had stuck to his skin, drawing a hiss, and Dean dumped it on the floor. 

The wound was much worse. The bleeding had slowed, but there were clear signs of a solid infection; pus was crusted around the edges of the injury, and an ugly green liquid was weeping from it.

Dean looked up at Sam, then back to Cas. 

“We need to irrigate that.”

Cas paled, but then nodded. “It’ll help…. My Grace should get a foothold then.”

Yeah, but it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Dean gave Mary the keys to the car so she could grab their gear, and then he went into the bathroom. He tore down the shower curtain, and brought it back into the main room.

Sam had got Cas on his feet, and Dean stretched the shower curtain out over the bed.

Then he helped Sam strip Cas, getting him down to his boxers, before stretching him out on the bed.

He was shivering, but any blanket or sheet would just get in their way.

Mary came in, and Sam pulled their first aid kit out of the bag.

More than once, one of them had gotten an infection from a bite, or from being clawed up, and going to the ER would just have raised too many questions, or they’d been nowhere near medical help.

They’d learned to make do, and survived it; Cas would too. He just needed a helping hand here and he’d be okay.

Dean grabbed the irrigation kit from it’s wrapper and tore it open, laying it out on the bed. They kept a couple of bags of saline for this purpose, and that he figured would do the trick.

But there was still the yuck caked around the edges of the wound; that, Dean figured, they’d get last once it was loosened off from the wound being flushed out.

Now, there was just how to do it.

“Cas, this is gonna hurt, buddy. You trust me, right?”

Cas nodded, Once, sharp, zero hesitation.

Dean steadied himself before going on.

“I’m going to hold on to you, Cas. Sam, get ready in case he cries out; we don’t want somebody calling the cops, because this is only going to look like one thing.”

Like they’d knifed somebody in their motel room; they’d get arrested, and Cas would get taken from them and put into hospital.

“Mom, you’re going to flush out the wound.”

She seemed to hesitate; Dean took her arm and drew her aside.

“We need you,” he insisted.

Mary looked at the stricken angel. “He knows you two. Trusts you.”

Dean held on to his temper barely, but kept his voice low. “Look, angel or not, this is going to hurt. You gonna hold him down? This is the only way it’s going to work.”

Mary nodded, but she looked almost as pale as Cas.

Guilt, Dean figured, and hoped she could stow it long enough to deal with this.

He crouched down next to Cas, and put his hands on the angel’s shoulders. Cas shivered, again, but his skin was roasting.

They had to do this now.

Sam was on the other side of the bed, also kneeling down. He kept his hands to himself, but Dean could see he was ready.

Mary mumbled an apology to Cas and then fitted up the first saline bag to the tubing. She hesitated, and then moved onto the bed to straddle Cas’s legs, careful to avoid doing anything to put pressure on or near the wound.

“Okay,” she said, but it sounded more like a question.

Cas nodded, and Dean wanted to snap at her to get on with it, when she held the tubing over the angel’s wound and squeezed the bag.

{]{}

It went pretty much as Dean expected. Cas gave a strangled shout, but managed to bite down on it fast. He squeezed his eyes shut, and clenched his hands into fists.

He did not, though, try to stop Mary or push them away from him.

“You’re doing good, buddy,” Dean said.

Cas gave no sign he’d heard him. It looked like he was trying to distance himself from the pain, block it off, and Dean wasn’t sure if Cas could keep that up until they were done.

The bag was only one third through.

For the first few minutes, nothing seemed to happen, but then Mary gasped and turned her face away.

Dean could smell it too; the gunk that started flooding out of the wound stank to high heavens. Even Sam’s eyes were watering.

If they’d waited to get back to the bunker, Dean wasn’t sure Cas would have been okay.

That shit pulsing out of him must have hurt worse though, because Cas flinched and tried to reach for the wound on reflex.

Dean caught his wrist and pushed it back to the bed, surprised at how easy it was. Cas must really have been weak, still.

“No,” he said, gently, “Cas, don’t.”

“Dean, it hurts.”

“I know.”

Sam rested his hand on Cas’s shoulder, comforting, but also ready in case Dean needed help restraining him if it came to it.

But by the end of the first bag, Dean had started to think it was okay. That Cas could handle it.

And then Mary put the empty bag aside, and looked up at them.

“They’re something in there,” she said. “Maybe that’s why it’s still infected.”

Dean’s panic must have shown on his face, because Mary shook her head. “No, it’s not part of the lance. I think it’s part of his shirt.”

Dean patted Cas’s shoulder, and then moved down the bed so he could look.

Their mom was right.

Deep down in the centre of the wound, Dean could see a fragment of fabric. Made sense, he supposed, that a piece of Cas’s shirt got snagged by the lance on the way in. 

But that meant they had to get it out, and that…

Dean reached into the first aid kit. There was a pair of long handled tweezers in there, perfect for removing splinters and other shit that got embedded in them when they were thrown through walls or dragged across dirt by angry ghosts.

It’d do for this.

He flipped them over, handed them to Mary, and then went back to the top of the bed.

“Cas,” he said.

Cas nodded. Of course, he’d heard. “I’m ready.”

Mary picked up the tweezers and as carefully as she could reached into the wound to grab the edge of fabric.

Dean knew when she’d got it, and he knew when she’d started to pull. Cas grit his teeth, but it was clear this was agony, and Sam was ready for his first cry of pain.

He put his hand over Cas’s mouth, apologising as Cas screamed and made muffled pleas for them to stop.

Cas reached up to push his hand away, and Dean was ready for that. He caught Cas’s wrists, pressed them to his chest, shaking his head when Cas begged with his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Cas. We gotta get it out. Hold on, okay? Mom, how you doing?”

Mary didn’t answer; her face was determined, and Dean guessed the piece of shirt was pushed in deep.

She gave a final hard tug and it came loose. 

It was soaked in blood and black pus, and it was larger than Dean had thought. There were even a couple of buttons still attached.

That had been in Cas, in the barn, on the drive to this motel.

No wonder the wound was infected.

Mary set the tweezers and fabric aside, and then rigged the second bag of saline.

Mid way through it, as more poison drained out of the wound, Cas passed out.

Dean and Sam let him go, watching as his head lolled to the side, face slack. 

Maybe that was best. Sam kept an eye on him, while Dean grabbed some antiseptic wipes.

When the second bag of saline was done, Dean cleaned the crusted pus from around the wound, and then put a clean dressing on it.

That was all they could do. He helped Mary off the bed, and they got rid of the trash.

Sam pulled a blanket over Cas, covering him, and pressed his hand to Cas’s forehead.

“He’s cooler,” he said.

That was a relief, at least. “Look, you two take the other two beds. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“We’ll keep an eye on him,” Sam insisted. “Mom, you turn in.”

Dean was a little surprised when Mary sat on the edge of the next bed and fixed them with a stubborn stare.

“We’ll all keep an eye on him.”

Dean considered arguing; as soon as Cas’s wound closed, or he was at least able to travel, they still faced a long drive to the bunker, with two vehicles.

But he could see this was her way of trying to make up for what she’d done, for bringing Cas to this.

He couldn’t refuse her, even if it was down to Cas if he wanted to forgive her. And, knowing Cas, the angel probably already had.

Dean sat down on the bed next to Cas while Sam stretched out, sitting up, on the third bed.

It wasn’t the first vigil either brother had sat for a member of their family. The way their luck ran, Dean suspected it wouldn’t be the last.

But when he checked Cas’s wound an hour later, it was almost closed over, and the horrible inflamed colour was fading.

He was going to be okay, and it was only then Dean let Mary persuade him to sleep.


End file.
